Sixintheworld.com

After our whirlwind tour of Seoul, we were still uncertain about what to expect from China. Just last week a friend from home warned us to prepare the kids for thick, brown air and an almost complete lack of English speakers. We’ve been all over the world, but perhaps nowhere as truly foreign as China. We had visions of frustration and confusion. Now that we’re here, we realize our concerns were largely unfounded. The air in Beijing is in fact thick and brown, but with only a week or so here we figure we’ll live. As for communicating, our one month crash course in Mandarin on the iPod has proven invaluable. Tom especially excels at diving into conversation and usually can make himself understood, though the language’s complex intonations are incredibly difficult to simulate much less master. We carry a map with us so we can point out where we want to go to taxi drivers and most menus include pictures so we can point when ordering as well. We are liberal in our gesticulation and find ourselves nodding for reasons even we don’t understand. But the bottom line is we love this place. The people here are warm, the food hearty, and the culture fascinating.

We arrived on Tuesday and were picked at the airport by three men who are co-workers of Tong West, a lovely young woman we met in Armidale, Australia. These guys took a big chunk out of the their day to wait for us at the airport and then shuttle us to our hotel. Tong had contacted them after I told her we were worried about figuring out how to function in Beijing. Though only one of them spoke a little English, we exchanged nods, laughs, and pleasantries and magically arrived at the hotel stress free. We couldn’t express to them with words how grateful we were for their generous gesture, so we offered to take them out to dinner. This didn’t go as we planned, however, because since we are guests in their country, they have insisted on taking us out instead.

Our first few days in Beijing have been busy. The first day Tom visited the American embassy to have more pages added to his passport in preparation for all the upcoming visas we will be getting. On the second day we took his newly fattened document along with our others to the Vietnamese embassy only to learn that our visas from them will not be ready until next Tuesday. (This could make life interesting since we subsequently learned we need them to move to a new hotel on Sunday.) With business squared away, we headed to Tianamen Square, the site of many of the city’s most important attractions. Some people would cover them all in a day, but not us. We like to take our time. If all goes according to plan, we’ll have seen them all by December. The blame for our snail’s pace does not reside solely with our little people, whose feet tire easily and who need frequent bathroom and snack breaks. Well, I take that back; it is their fault, albeit indirectly. Making the Koreans look shy, the Chinese cannot get enough of our kids, especially the little blonde one. They stop dead in their tracks, point, touch, smile, take pictures, and want to talk. They simply cannot comprehend that we have four children in a land where one is the norm. That none of them have black hair is even more amazing. Though I am brunette, I’ve even found an admirer or two who undoubtedly confuses me for Jennifer Aniston or Angelina Jolie and asks to pose with me.

When we are not posing for pictures, we are fending off salespeople and scammers. We went with the first English-speaking “art student” we met by the embassy to view his work, which not surprisingly was for sale. Our Rough Guide had warned us about this particular con, so we accepted his gift of our names rendered in calligraphy, extended our thanks, and departed. That only took 45 minutes. When we got to Tianamen, McKane was eager to spend some of his pocket money on trinkets. We warned him that the hawkers would be aggressive, but according to the dictates of his typically refreshing worldview, this is a bonus. Tom gave him a brief lesson in negotiating and he proceeded to strike hard bargains with more than a few salespeople. He then took it one step further and started approaching them, brandishing a 1 Yuan bill (the equivalent of 12 cents) and begging them to sell him whatever they had for that price. When we were approached by more art students, Tom’s twist on this version of reverse psychology was to tell them he was an art professor. All in good fun, he would weave stories of how we all are from different countries and speak different languages. This worked well until one of the students started speaking Swedish to him. Oops. Dax and I prefer to say no and walk away, but Tom and McKane like to engage in lively conversation and have fun. I guess what’s fun for some people is painful for others.

We have managed to see the Forbidden City and walk up and down the Square about 5 times (it’s a really big square). We’re going out to a remote portion of the Great Wall early next week and will spend the weekend soaking up the city. What a city, what a country, and as always, what good people!

Technorati Tags: Beijing, Family travel, China, Round the world, Round-the-world, RTW, Tianamen Square

This is one of two philosophical posts I have been thinking about since we decided to take this trip. I could have written them as two of our first entries, but I decided to post them when our travel train had a full head of steam. After three countries and a little time in China, I think the boilers are on high. We might even be getting to the point where this has become a lifestyle and not a vacation.

During the months leading up to our trip, we talked to a lot of people about what we were doing. Their responses fell mostly into two categories. The first group of people thought, “How wonderful,” and joked about joining us in one capacity or another. The second group gave us mystified looks and bluntly asked, “Why?” In both groups, I am sure there is still a bit of wonderment, a “why this?” or “why now?” I will admit the timing could have been better, but it also could have been a whole lot worse. Anne and I have been talking about doing something like this for years. It was often one of those late night subjects and was usually spawned by the discovery of a family, individual, or couple who had decided to travel around the world. We would talk about it, mention places we wanted to go, and let it pass into the realm of dreams. However last year was a pivotal time in our lives. A confluence of occurrences drove home three very important lessons and pushed me to take this trip and take it now.

The first happened about a year ago, when good friends of ours lost their 16 year old son in a car crash. It was a tragic situation for those who knew and loved him, but it was especially hard on our friends, his parents. As they went through the grieving process, they both said things that touched me. They pointed out how fleeting this earthly existence is. Comfortingly, we share a belief in an afterlife where we will see our loved ones again, but that doesn’t take away the pain they suffered as future graduations, marriages, grandchildren, etc. disappeared in a single night. Their response was to glory in the time they had spent with their son and to fondly remember the many vacations they had taken together. The lesson to me was to enjoy the kids more while they’re still young. They grow up quickly and you can never get your time with them back.

The second epiphany happened while I was on a volunteer trip cleaning up New Orleans from the devastation left by Katrina. We spent a couple of weekends working in different areas of Mississippi and New Orleans, removing trees, gutting houses, and trying to lend a hand to those in need. However, it was a single moment on one of these trips that impacted me the most. We were in New Orleans about 10 weeks after the hurricane; some were getting their lives back together. Some restaurants were open, some people were back in their homes. We even stopped to get beignets at Cafe du Monde on the end of our first full day. On the second morning, we were driving into the city to gut a house in the 9th Ward. As we came around a bend on I-10, we could see the Superdome with all its damage on the right and to the left was an equally impressive structure. A large landfill had suddenly appeared just to the side of the city. I had driven the road a few years earlier and knew there had not been a landfill in that location. Then it hit me: that giant landfill with bulldozers running across it had been people’s possessions only 11 weeks before. Many of the people who were now putting their lives back together were doing it without their stuff. As gut wrenching as it was to add people’s wedding albums, family photo albums, and treasured wall hangings to the pile, I knew they would all be fine even in the absence of these keepsakes. For those whose families had lived through that terrifying day, they would pull things together and start over. I then tried to think of how I would fare in similar circumstances. I hope I would be fine without stuff, but my actions reflect a different prioritization. I spend a lot of time acquiring, using, and servicing possessions. My trip to New Orleans drove home to me a very important lesson: stuff is just stuff.

The third thing I learned was fairly common. It is a lesson I know comes with age, but one I had hoped would come decades down the road. In March I had to get my hip replaced. I knew this was coming and had postponed the surgery for a number of years. In preparation, I needed to get a physical to be cleared for surgery. I hadn’t been to a regular doctor for a number of years and did not have a primary physician in Georgia, our residence for almost four years. I found one in the Yellow Pages and went in for a quick check up. He did all the normal tests. My blood pressure was low, my cholesterol good, and my general sense of invincibility–enhanced with with bionic joints–remained in tact. A week after the physical, they called and said there was a problem with my blood. They suggested I go see a very specific hematologist. I quickly looked him up on line and noticed that he was not a hematologist but an oncologist. My mind raced down paths I did not want it to follow. After a week, I got an idea of what had scared my primary doctor. The oncologist decided to run a more thorough series of tests and told me to wait another week. I spent another seven days on the edge of my seat before the oncologist asked me to come back to his office–not the best sign. Fortunately, the only thing broken was the machinery that ran my first blood test. I was cancer and blood disease free. The oncologist was great and told me to try and avoid him for 40 or 50 years. I recognize this is such a minor scare that I hesitated to write about it, but it was the first hit of a one-two punch (the second being complications after surgery) that helped me realize life is both fragile and short. We need do the important things when we can.

In the wake of these three lessons, I felt forced to metaphorically jump out of the plane and spend a year dedicated exclusively to the family. The travel and service will only enhance the experience. Everyone will be out of their comfort zones. Each of us will have only each other. We will need to rely on and enjoy each other much more than we have at any time in our lives.